xaggerate the value of whatever is
our own, and to depreciate that which is our neighbour's, a principle that
is connected with the very ground-work of poor human nature, forms a
material portion of travelling equipage of nearly every one who quits the
scenes of his own youth, to visit those of other people. A comparison
between Cowes and Philadelphia is even more absurd than a comparison
between New York and London, and yet, in this instance, it answered the
purpose of raising a lively controversy between an American wife and a
European husband.

The consul at Cowes had been an old acquaintance at school some
five-and-twenty years before, and an inquiry was set on foot for his
residence. He was absent in France, but his deputy soon presented himself
with an offer of services. We wished for our trunks, and it was soon
arranged that there should be an immediate examination. Within an hour we
were summoned to the store-house, where an officer attended on behalf of
the customs. Everything was done in a very expeditious and civil manner,
not only for us, but for a few steerage passengers, and this, too, without
the least necessity for a _douceur_, the usual _passe-partout_ of England.
America sends no manufactures to Europe; and, a little smuggling in
tobacco excepted, there is probably less of the contraband in our
commercial connexion with England, than ever before occurred between two
nations that have so large a trade. This, however, is only in reference to
what goes eastward, for immense amounts of the smaller manufactured
articles of all Europe find their way, duty free, into the United States.
There is also a regular system of smuggling through the Canadas, I have
been told.

While the ladies were enjoying the negative luxury of being liberated from
a ship, at the Fountain Inn, I strolled about the place. You know that I
had twice visited England professionally before I was eighteen; and, on
one occasion, the ship I was in anchored off this very island, though not
at this precise spot. I now thought the people altered. There had
certainly been so many important changes in myself during the same period,
that it becomes me to speak with hesitation on this point: but even the
common class seemed less peculiar, less English, _less provincial_, if one
might use such an expression, as applied to so great a nation; in short,
more like the rest of the world than formerly. Twenty years before,
England was engaged in a war, b